Engage 24 – 10/11/2012 What we accomplished at Drexel.

On this Thursday (10/11/12) students who are followers of Jesus Christ intentionally engaged their campuses with the story of Gospel that they believe. Engage24 is a 24-hour period focused on engaging the world with the good news of Christ. While Engage24 is intensely focused on a single day of evangelism (10/11/12), our mission is to promote a 24/7 lifestyle of evangelism and engagement with the gospel. Now it is time to transition from Engage24 to Engage365!

On Wednesday I listed some goals for what we hoped to accomplish that day. The goals are below and what we actually did is listed to.

We did not reach this goal. I still have over 200 granola bars hanging around. I was surprised by how many students were not interested in free food.

Have 50 students that we connect with over the granola bars be willing to take Soularium surveys.

We exceeded this goal. We took approximately 75 students through Soularium. We were very seldom not engaged in at least one conversation during the day. We were busy talking to students from 10 AM until 6:30PM. We had students talking to us when were setting up and when we were breaking down. At times we had 8 students gathered around the table listening to our students walk through Soularium with them.

Have 10 of those Soularium Surveys transition into deeper spiritual conversation and complete gospel presentations.

I know one campus minister was able to present the Gospel to 3 different individuals.

I know one student presented the Gospel twice.

I’m pretty sure I heard another student share it once.

I was able to share it once.

That makes 8 Gospel presentations from Soularium conversations that I know about. I have to talk to some of the other students that were helping with the table to see if there are ones that I don’t know about.

Give opportunity for 10 Christian students to publicly express their Christian beliefs in real conversations with their peers.

9 Students and 3 Campus Minister members participated yesterday.

Give opportunity for 2 Christian students to publicly express their Christian beliefs in real conversations with their peers for their first time.

3 students shared their faith for the first time yesterday on Drexel’s campus. Those three students: one was a Chinese International student leader who share his faith for the first time in English, one was a freshmen commuter student who shared his faith for the first time on campus, and another was a relatively new Christian who it was their first opportunity to share their new faith.

My favorite moment of the day was when I looked at our Soularium table and saw Jaun, a Drexel freshmen from my church whose parents immigrated from Columbia, Frank, A Chinese International student and Darian and African American student were the Christian students working the table and each was engaged in a Soularium Conversation with one or more other Drexel students. Below are some other things that happened at Drexel because of Engage24.

At Drexel there has been a good amount of partnership between several Christian student organizations and church groups: Drexel Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ, Epiphany Fellowship’s life group, Chinese Christian Fellowship and Disciples InDeed will all be involved on some level tomorrow.

There has been great partnering support between churches and campus ministries especially in the Southern Baptist Convention.

The simple idea of Engage24 has basically gone viral and we keep hearing about people and ministries that will be participating that we don’t know how they heard about it.

For a an idea that was formed in a room with 7 campus minsters a year ago, it is really cool to see what God has done.